Why is Soul Mantle so bad?

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pneuma wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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pneuma wrote:

On an unrelated topic, this is what uniques should be like. It's nice to have to think instead of just BiS shenanigans.

I disagree. It feels like toyems have become balanced around Soul Mantle to stick an extent that the chest is mandatory if you're using totems.

Most totem builds don't use Soul Mantle.
Most totem builds don't use Spell Totem, either.

So... no, that's not it. It's a huge upside with a huge downside. That's a good thing.

not its not.
It is pretty good upside with a devastating downside.
This chest is simply unusable in HC (well you can use it but everybody I know who did it did die pretty fast).

There is a reason why you cant even sell it for 1c...

it is the kind of chest you use to farm content that doesn't matter. in terms of clear speed, it doesn't add much since 2 totems should kill trash mobs before the third is cast (which is why most totem build will not use it... unnecessary)

i can see a use for it if you want to farm dominus and want to down his forms faster , but other than that... it not very useful.

most totem mf builds pride themselves on being the very definition of dirt cheap which kind of implies building a 5/ 6l on the cheap cheap rather than dicking around rolling a 5l -6l of soul mantle ones own

it doesnt help that spell totem as a support is counted among the worst support gems in the game.

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gilrad wrote:

Out of curiosity, is it feasible to keep permanent curse immunity uptime by simply filling your belt with a bunch of curse-immune utility flasks? IIRC quicksilvers have the best economy of uptime, charge usage, and charge cost.

I always thought it would be cool to make a triple flameblast totem build where all you do is cast the totems and the fourth one would kill the first, setting off the FB spell.

You should be able to do that with just AB, though I'm not sure there's much benefit over just self casting. Storm Call would play similarly, but might actually benefit from a third totem, given enough totem summoning & cast speed. IMO, totem support was over nerfed (perhaps, as Scrotie suggests, because it's balanced around having x3 + full passives now), and then Spell Echo was the final nail in its well furnished coffin.

Upside/downside wise it is ok, I think. However, the fixed level of the spell totem (which is the main focus of your build) is kind of damaging. Losing its quality isn't that painful, but the HP you are missing is pretty terrible.

I'd say it would come back to some more use, if level of the spell totem would somewhat scale with your own. I know, I know, GGG is against such thing, but I can't quite see how otherwise it can be "fixed". If you would be able to get level 20 spell totem at, say, level 85, I think it would see more use as and end game. Its downside can be dealt with, and additional totem is a really good upside. Also, adding some kind of "Totems in this item deal 10-15% more damage"(can't use skills that are already totems in this item, too) would somewhat make it a little more interesting too. Maybe.

But summing it up, I would really see some work around it, since nobody really cares about it atm, and it is far from being a "perfect unique".

Im pretty sure soul mantle's purpouse is just a leveling unique for totem builds, and it works great for that since it lets you grab other passives before having to go all the way to ancestral bond, iw ouldnt treat it as a high level mapping unique because its not

One upon a time it was "Why would I ever cast a spell myself when I could have two totems do it for me."

This was obviously not the way they wanted casters to be.

They unfortunately overdid the totem nerf. You can't make a spell totem or ranged totem (lol) build anymore.

It does give a lot more area for searing bonders.... do they want/need it? I don't know :P
As sad as Soul Mantle is, I'm not aware of any time Ranged Attack Totems were good.

Run AA and account for 2 of these bad-boys:

RIP curses. (2 mins/cycle if your mana management works out)

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azraelb wrote:

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pneuma wrote:

Most totem builds don't use Soul Mantle.
Most totem builds don't use Spell Totem, either.

So... no, that's not it. It's a huge upside with a huge downside. That's a good thing.

not its not.
It is pretty good upside with a devastating downside.
This chest is simply unusable in HC (well you can use it but everybody I know who did it did die pretty fast).

There is a reason why you cant even sell it for 1c...

It's not unusable in HC, it's extremely risky in HC and you need to be on top of your warding flasks and you need to get rares with defensive stats in pretty much every other gear slot to make up for the lack of them in the chest. You also need to keep your distance from enemies even more than usual. It's a real risk, not a paper risk like the "horrible downside" of Shav's having less than a mirror-chest amount of ES.

Honestly, if people aren't willing to take the risk, then don't get the reward and chug along "as normal". It's a decision point that isn't an obvious choice unlike tons of other BiS uniques and other math maximization problems.

There is certainly at least one HC-viable tri-totem build. If people are selling it for 1c, that's all the better. It's only a <L50 chest anyway, it's not meant to be "balanced by rarity".

There are other, larger balance forces at work that makes tri-totem (or toteming at all) less than desirable. Spell Totem (support) is pretty shit right now, and RAT has always been shit. The promise is that totems give you extremely safe damage because they act at a distance from you and allow for maximal kiting (and around corners).

Spell Echo similarly shifted the hard-caster dps up so high that it's nearly impossible to even compete on totems, even if you play unsafely, even if you use Soul Mantle. And as long as large quantities of spell/elemental leech exists, there's not even that much of a defensive argument for totems since leeching does so much more.

At any rate, it's certainly a more interesting, thought-requiring unique body armor than the vast majority of them. That's closer to a "perfect unique" in my book.

its an amazing unique it allows 2 totems without the ancestral bond restriction
saw a build few month ago stormcall totem +selfcast coldsnap high crit version

i used to dislike the unique till i saw the build

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1151549/page/1